My view on greatest possible improvement to UR

[StephenUK]

Having worked with UR for some months I am finding it does far more than I expected and is a delight. However, I thought I would post my view as to the one enhancement that I think would particularly benefit UR in a future release. I have mentioned this before on the forum, but without an example, which really is necessary to explain the concept.

Data is located either by searching or by browsing. Both have their place and both are important. Whereas UR is strong on searching, it is really rather weak on browsing.

Where using the browsing method, I believe that visual clues are particularly valuable. A long list of descriptions in the data pane, even if accurate, take quite a while to read. In contrast, the use of thumbnails provides almost immediate recognition.

In PaperPort document management software, thumbnails are created for nearly all types of file, including, very importantly, MS Word files which I have never seen displayed in other programs. PaperPort is very weak in other ways and no real competition for UR in my view. But its use of thumbnails is brilliant and its main strength.

I attach a screen clipping of a small export from UR, as it displays viewed in PaperPort.

Imagine that instead of displaying seven items there were one hundred. And imagine that one was browsing for a particular pdf, Word document, or web page. Then imagine what a chore it would be to read up to 100 labels in the Data Explorer pane, compared with scrolling through 100 thumbnails.

Even text data usually has a shape, and it is often quickly recognised visually. Therefore the thumnails are useful for far more than just photographs.

Screen clipping attached.